How are you using tags?

[AndrewSimm]

Since 2011 I have opened two boards that have a combined 10 million posts, but in the same period, they have a combined 0 tags. In fact, I have never allowed users to utilize tags. I never saw the point in tags and have always tried to keep the boards simple. Now, I expect a lot of successful boards do use tagging, so my question is, how do you use tagging and what have you learned from your experience?

 

[beerForo]

Disabled

 

[m1ne]

They allow me to quickly view threads of the same type.

 

[djbaxter]

Like you, @AndrewSimm, I have never seen the point of tags and never use them.

 

[sbj]

Tags are basically the same thing as prefixes and custom thread fields.

I am majoraly using custom thread fields and prefixes to "tag" threads, but I don't use tags. Don't see the point of it when I have the other 2 options.

And I have never seen a forum which used tags and I found it useful.

 

[Steve F]

Except that your users can’t create prefixes or custom fields.

 

[JoyFreak]

Tags are basically the same thing as prefixes

Basically. I've started to use tags myself and use them heavily in my articles.

 

[sbj]

Except that your users can’t create prefixes or custom fields.

You can create single/multi line textbox custom thread fields, which does the same thing.

Also I said "basically". With prefixes you can give them the options they can choose and with the multi-prefix addon you can let them have multiple ones. And prefixes can be seen directly in the nodelist, whereas tags are almost invisible.

 

[beerForo]

I use prefixes for organization. Basically subjects of my theme (instead of sub-forums).

I don't use tags. I would welcome hashtags, people are used to that, #tag inside the body of the post. A separate field for tags with no # is too 2004/bloggy.

For now, I'm fine with prefixes.

 

[Alternadiv]

Surprised to see a lot of you guys not using them.

I never have either. Thought I was in the minority. Prefixes are useful to organize things. But tags, to me, just create clutter. Searching for keywords is almost the same thing anyway.

 

[SyTry]

I'm using an add-on for predefined tags per category, I don't allow my members to create tag !

 

[imno007]

Depends partly on your content, how useful they are or not. If you create a lot of threads with certain standardized formatting, with subject lines and/or post content, they can come in very handy, assuming you can get everyone on board with using them the way you want them used. The main problem with them out-of-the-box is that your only real option is to require a minimum number of them in whatever node. Being able to assign certain tags to certain nodes by default, on thread creation, or an option to force users to choose among certain tags only, better batch options, things like that, would make them more useful. Hence you have prefixes, but then prefixes are severely hampered by being able to apply only one per thread. Have to use addon's to make up for the deficits of both.

 

[lazy llama]

We tried them a while back but our users being the mickey-taking gits that they are, we had to turn them off as they were weaponising tags, abusing them, gaming the tag cloud and just about every other kind of mis-use you can imagine for an internet forum.

So, yeah, disabled tags now.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Resurrecting an old discussion to add some thoughts in support of tags.
I think they can be an extremely flexible and powerful way to discover content.
To achieve this you need to have useful tags created for new (and existing) threads. The AI generated tags in my addon Tag Essentials was created to improve the title based method we previously used. The first method was ok but the new method using ChatGPT to analyse the forum name, thread title and first post text to produce new tags can return really good results.

You need to make the presence of these tags obvious to viewers so that they are aware of their existence. I achieved this with some simple styling as I think the default tag styling makes them too inconspicuous.

Then consider that tags are included in the simple forum search which means that well organised tags can produce relevant search results right off the bat.
But you can additionally display tag clouds in widgets for each forum to display the most popular used tags to help viewers quickly display relevant threads.

I think tags can be a very useful tool.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think tags can be a very useful tool.

That's what I thought then got idiots using them randomly, e.g. a tag like


Or Youtube:

 

[BassMan]

I always liked tags, but maybe more as a forum admin. My users never get used to it, never really use them. So I quit using them months ago and I see no SEO penalty. I don't know, I just stop bothering with them. But maybe I'll try with them again in the future.

I was using Stuart’s add-on (but before AI implementation), which is perfect if you want to use tags.

 

[tajhay]

Used to use tags. Done away with them recently as they seem rather antiquated for 2023.

 

[cwe]

I use tags. My forums have tag cloud widgets to highlight them.

I ran an experiment for a few months requiring members to include a tag when posting a new thread. The quality of tag inputs was ... not great. I ended the mandatory input experiment and handle 90% of the thread tagging now.

The most useful benefit of the tagging system is being able to search for content related to 3 letter acronyms (tag search) or to search for very common words (where certain words are used commonly all over the forum, but only some threads are truly about the subject properly).

 

[Mr Lucky]

The quality of tag inputs was ... not great.

Yes I think making tags compulsory on some forums is what led to some of the stupid ones I showed earlier. maybe time to give it another try.

 

[80sDude]

I use them in a cloud widget and threads. They can't hurt.